


a song of scars

by orphan_account



Series: Ship Amnesty Night [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dark Character, Jealousy, M/M, Rough Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:16:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a Ship Amnesty Night request - 'Maedhros/Maglor, at the end'. Maglor would weave music out of his brother's worst memories, if he could only convince Maedhros to reveal them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a song of scars

Maglor had been jealous of Fingon - bright-eyed, possessive Fingon, who covered up his sly mind and harsh emotions with a too-easy laugh and smile - for so long.  
  
 _I should have been the one to save you,_ his guilt whispered whenever he looked at Maedhros; but quickly afterwards envy followed, with its poison-slicked murmurs. _Fingon claimed your life when he saved it. He saw you as you truly were, and kept it to himself. Kept you with him until you were pretending again, until you would not show a scrap of your true self to me, not willingly._  
  
He had seen Maedhros once while he was recovering, and even then he could feel Fingon’s eyes burning into his back. It was only for perhaps half an hour he had been allowed to sit by his brother’s bedside, twine the fingers of his remaining hand with his, carefully trace the swell of the stump under the covers where Maedhros had kept it.  
  
Of course he had been distraught; and occupied most of the time with apologies, relayed messages from their younger brothers (and a sword made for a left hand only, handed over without comment by Curufin to him and from him to Maedhros, to be leant by the bed until he could lift it) and what little comfort he could give.  
  
But he was an artist, a teller of tales through music; and in every storyteller, in every artist there was a craving for dark things.  
  
 _What a song this would make, how tragic and moving_ , his mind had murmured during the Darkening, even as his father screamed and cursed the Valar and he looked upon his grandfather’s bloodied corpse.  
  
And when the ships were taken and then burned, when he had time to lay hands to harp again, the Noldolantë was born - and oh, it was glorious. His masterpiece, for the greatest music was born from tears that fell on the strings and blood that was woven through the tale, and that song held such a power that his other compositions paled in comparison; the meager compositions of a child fed on secondhand grief and far-off danger, of nebulous and creeping dread rather than the sudden bright chords of a sword-stroke.  
  
When Fingon barred him from his brother’s presence, and then only permitted him to see him for a short time; when his brother was already attempting to act normal, to hide his scars, Maglor felt rage stew within him. He did not shout like Celegorm or use barbed words as Curufin would; he poured his frustration into his music, tunes that would make those that heard time restless and tearful, but did not know how to express it in words.  
  
 _Who else has returned from Angband?_ he found himself thinking. _Who else would have a story such as my brother?_  
  
But Fingon had kept him in those days when he was still wracked with the pain of it, Fingon had endured whatever rage or pain Maedhros might have been of mind to inflict, Fingon alone had witnessed his broken nature - Maedhros’ own Darkening - so intimately, and Fingon (Maedhros felt this last with a self-righteous anger) while competent in music, was no storyteller. He had returned to Maglor a Maedhros with shadows in his eyes that he refused to speak of, a wrist-stump covered, all his stories of torment untold; except to, perhaps, his cousin, and that thought made Maglor burn with frustrated anger again. Fingon did not know how to craft beauty out of brokenness, to trace notes of music in the outline of scars, to hear the rhythm in a cry of pain.  
  
If Maedhros would only turn to him, Maglor would shape his pain into a song.  
  
But until their brothers had died one by one, and cousins as well (they left graves wherever they walked, as rumor had said flowers had sprung where Fingolfin and his children put their feet) there was no hope, for Maedhros hid his night-terrors in his own room and brushed off Maglor’s few shy overtures (in his music he is bold, in words he stammers and cannot find the way to ask, let alone demand).  
  
Still, with every death, another song is woven into Maglor’s harp-strings that holds more beauty than the last, and Maedhros’ mask slips a little more.  
  
Maglor mourns; mourns, and plays some of the simpler songs he knows for the twins he plays at being father to, and understands a little of why Maedhros held back from him. But deep within him there is a strange delight, knowing that soon Maedhros might reveal to him what was darkened and bent in his brother’s soul; his fingers shudder on his harp-strings in anticipation, sometimes, when the young ones are not watching him, and Maedhros passes by.  
  
~  
  
The night they argue over the Silmarils is the night that Maedhros breaks.  
  
"We could return to Valinor," Maglor was pleading, long accustomed to playing the gentler voice once that Maedhros had lost his, "and ask that the Oath be dissolved -"  
  
Maedhros’ hand shot out to the side, and the bowl on the table near where he stood went to the floor; the sound of the shatter cleared the air of any other noise. Maglor caught and held his breath, keeping wary eyes on his brother; they were alone, in the room they kept for their private discussions.  
  
 _Will this be it, then?_ his mind whispers, and a shiver of anticipation goes down his spine.  
  
And it might be the impulse that prods his next words, for even a fool could see staying quiet would be best.  
  
"I do not see why you would protest," he said. "It might be the best way to -"  
  
"I cannot return to Valinor." Maedhros says, his voice almost a growl, and he turns sharply - but not all the way; Maglor can see only a corner of his mouth, taut with pain and anger.  
  
"Why not?" Maglor presses, keeping his voice puzzled - playing it a little too innocent, maybe, but he needed Maedhros to be angry at how stupid he was being, needed him to want to _show_ him -  
  
Maedhros was upon him then, an animal-like snarl leaving his lips as he seized a handful of Maglor’s hair, jerking his head back. His eyes were almost glowing, but not with the light of Valinor; since he had returned from Angband, Maglor realized, they had not shone with that light.  
  
"You know nothing," he spat, shaking Maglor like an angry cat with a kitten, "of what I became, when I was lost in the darkness, of what I am now -"  
  
Maglor’s scalp was stinging, tears swimming in his eyes, but he does not want to push Maedhros back. This might be his only chance. “Show me, then,” he gasps out, blinking the tears away and staring up into Maedhros’ furious eyes.  
  
He could almost hear the crash of music as Maedhros threw him to the ground; and although there is light in his brother’s eyes as he sweeps down, his hand (and the brush of flesh that is all left of the other) vicious against Maglor’s skin and his legs pinning him to the floor, Maglor finds himself struggling to make the proper wording for it in his head. A dark light, an unlight almost…  
  
Maedhros regrets it, he can tell, even as their hips thrust together and Maglor feels him hard enough to be aching; there is a muffled sob in his breath as he bends down to bite and suck at Maglor’s neck, to rip the his shirt open (and it had not been flimsy material, but under Maedhros’ grasp it parted like thin paper). But Maglor could not bring himself to try and make him stop.  
  
He entices, instead, with murmured not-quite protests, not-quite encouragements and whimpers and an unresisting body. He savors every blow, every bite-mark Maedhros left patterned against his shoulders and arms and thighs; he can see Maedhros unraveling, the stories he had never told playing out in the way he touches Maglor now.  
  
Had it been Sauron, he wonders briefly, who had touched him in this way; thin, powerful fingers thrust within him, stroking and stretching and touching the right place until he was sobbing, rocking back against the pressure, begging for more? Even as Maedhros’ arm presses against his chest, holding him roughly in place as he enters him, he feels his brother is being gentler than him than he had been dealt with in Angband; but it was enough, at least, to begin to understand, to guess at what it had done to him…  
  
"You’ve - wanted this," he pants out, hands clutching against the rug as Maedhros pulls back, drives in; each stroke almost knocks his breath out.  
  
Maedhros’ fingertips dug into his shoulders, and for a moment Maglor thinks he might back away, leave him here half-naked and aching, for the sake of fleeing from the truth; so he deliberately rocks back, letting a soft moan spill from his lips, and Maedhros makes a sound that is more like a cry of pain.  
  
"Yes," he grits out, " _yes,_ " and is throwing him down again, turning him over so he can kiss him in a blood-touched clash of mouths, fingers buried in Maglor’s soft masses of hair.  
  
Maedhros’ cock rides against Maglor’s, against the slickness that Maglor’s blood and Maedhros’s spit had left on his thighs, and he seems to lose all semblance of control. Maglor arches beneath his touches, knowing he is helpless to stop it and not caring; it is the end of all things, he knows, too soon, and he wants Maedhros to fuck him, touch him and hurt him in whatever way he pleased until every melody was milked dry from his body, until Maglor could gather up the missing notes that made up his brother’s spirit.  
  
His only worry (lost quickly in the same frenzied haze Maedhros is seized by) is that he might not have enough time to compose it properly, knowing that their theft of the Silmarils might likely end in their deaths.   
  
Well, he reassures himself (foggily, as Maedhros takes his cock in hand, whispering horrors into his ear, and music unrolls like a tapestry in his mind) whatever happened, he needed to find enough time to allot to its creation.  
  
Music such as this deserved all the time necessary to sing it properly.

  
  
(days later, a row of aimless footprints in the sand and the echo of a fledgling song is all that remains)


End file.
